Stay with me
by JEGlass
Summary: Caught in the crosshairs of an interdimensional summoning, Erin, Holtzmann, Patty, and Abby are pitted in a life and death situation against a monster plucked from the depths of their nightmares. Four against one isn't bad odds. Four against an Ether Whale is another story, but the greater questions becomes who will make it out of this skirmish alive?
1. Chapter 1

This wasn't a class five entity. This thing didn't exist on a scale. The four women watch in stunned horror as the chalk markings on the warehouse floor flex and become membrane-thin. Something colossal writhes under the earth, pushing outward in a grotesque mockery of embryonic birth.

"This is some Hellboy shit right here," Abby hears Holtzmann mutter. For once the blonde wasn't smiling her customary mad-scientist grin, and that was almost more terrifying than the creature rising before them.

Creature. More like a monster. Nothing they'd faced yet compared to the being ripping its way out of one plane of existence and squeezing into another. This was quickly becoming biblically scary.

"We are so screwed," Patty whispers, gun hanging slack in her hands. Two years ago, a ten story, man-baby-ghost went on a rampage through Time Square with a posy of ghouls in tow, and Patty had hardly been able to wrap her head around that. But this? She signed up to hunt and trap ghosts, not battle Godzilla.

"If we close the portal before it manifests, it won't solidify in our realm," Erin says, adjusting the straps of her proton pack until the machine sits flush against her jumpsuit. Out of the four, she was the only one who seemed genuinely excited. Or at the very least eager. She'd been tracking the whereabouts of the Ether Cult for the better part of six months. To arrive just as they started their summons was a stroke of sublime luck, but somewhere between Ecto-1 and the warehouse Erin began to realize she and her friends might be stepping into something far beyond them.

"Scuff the markings," Holtzmann suggests with a nonchalant shrug. As always, her gun rests across her shoulders. "Pretty straight forward magical summons. No marks, no portal." Patty, Erin, and Abby all turn to look at her, eyebrows simultaneously cocking. "What? No one experimented in college?"

"Holtzmann, no one experimented like you in college," Patty snorts.

The blonde does a small hip thrust and winks. "Well, you're not wrong."

Abby was about to retort with something sharp when a pulse of energy rocks the area, blowing out windows within a block radius. The sound is deafening. Tremors shaking the ground, concrete and steel rippling and buckling against the force of something pushing through the earth. The warehouse floor takes on the texture of a cracking egg, bowing outward around the portal.

Retreating to a safer distance, the Ghostbusters watch the impossible happen. The chalk outlining the portal glow a sizzling red seconds before a clawed hand bigger than a city bus slashes through the thin membrane separating worlds and sinks into the concrete, hooked nails gouging furrows in the floor.

"Ah shit," Erin winces, scrunching her eyes closed. "It's an Ether Whale."

"A what?" Patty snaps, hands going vice-tight around the barrel of her gun.

"That."

The Whale fills the warehouse like bubbling tar, one grotesque foot at a time. It was like something out of an H.R. Giger painting. Scales, claws, pincers, tentacles, this thing had them all in some way, shape, or form. Slimy and reptilian, it possessed the body of a salamander with six vaguely canine legs capped with claws of the raptor variety. Four separate faces, one for each direction and all eerily human, sit below a twitching crown of spines that divert down its back and explode into a mass of spikes around a thrashing, prehensile tail. Along its underbelly—like the sturdy legs of a centipede—writhe human-sized hair-like tentacles.

Put plainly, the creature was hideously terrifying. And what was worse, it became quickly apparently the Whale wasn't content remaining penned in a brick and mortar building. With a well-placed swing of its tail, the left side of the warehouse explodes outward in a thunderous crash and out rolls the newest nightmare to grace New York.

"We can't let it reach the city!" Erin shouts, taking chase, cult members forgotten. If they were smart, they would have been miles away by now. If she was smart, she and her friends would have been too.

"What the hell do you think we're going to do against that?" Abby barks, snagging the brunette by the arm and pulling her to a stop. Ahead of them, the Whale buckles and tips into a building. For a creature so massive, it's uncoordinated, clearly unused to the differences between this plane and the one it had birthed from.

"Catch or slime, that's what we do," Erin bites back.

"No, we," Abby gestures to the rest of the team, "hunt and trap ghosts. We don't take on fricken Pacific Rim Kaiju who just crawled out of an interdimensional portal!"

"We fought Rowan!"

"Who was a ghost! A powerful one, but still a dead man walking! That's not a ghost, Erin, and I don't have a Jaeger we can pilot!"

"Dude, I'd be totally drift compatible with you," Holtzmann winks at Patty who makes a noise in the back of her throat as if to say 'yeah, okay, I can see that'.

"It's a paranormal entity. Abby," Erin moves into her friend's personal space, clasping her forearm, "this is bigger than us."

"No shit!" the short woman laughs cynically. "It's probably bigger than the Chrysler Building!"

"You know what I mean," the brunette pleads. "Interdimensional entity. An alien in the flesh. If we bring that thing down, we're set for life. Think of the research. Think of what we can learn."

"Think of the smear you'll make on the concrete when it steps on you!"

"Think of the lives we're gonna have to save if that thing gets even within a mile of Time Square," Patty adds. Abby gives her a cutting look. "This is kind of on us, Abby. It's what we do. And besides, we were here when it crossed over. Kind of our responsibility to put it back or put it under."

"You're going to get us killed," Abby growls, but even she can tell when to pick her battles.

"We're Ghostbusters. It's what we do," Holtzmann grins, mad-scientist once again. "I'm in. Plus, if things go south, got a backup surprise I've been working on." She pats her Buster-bag affectionately but gently. No telling what would set off her newest toy.

Decision made the four power up and take chase. The plan was simple. Get it down, get it under control, and then get it boxed, but seldom do things go as planned.

Chasing down the Whale wasn't hard. Firing at it wasn't either—big entities made good targets—but what it lacked in speed it made up for in resilience. Proton beams had little effect on it save for tangling its legs and sending it toppling into more real estate. Grenades and Abby's proton fist had the greatest effect of pissing the Whale off more than harming it.

But two blocks into the skirmish the tables turn from an attempted wrangling into a proper yet unwanted battle.

Acclimating to its surroundings, the Whale begins gaining both speed and dexterity. It counters attacks with swipes of claw and tail, tearing through buildings, shops, and fleeing civilians with frightening ease. And like any good monster, it feeds off the fear created by its presence, cutting a red trail of terror through the city, one street at a time, until it realized its true obstacles reside in four determined yet equally terrified women. That was when the hunters become the hunted.

"This going about how you pictured it?!" Abby shouts, keeping pace with Erin as they sprint hard down a deserted street, the Ether Whale hot on their heels.

"A setback!"

"Just admit you fucked up!" Abby yelps when a car whizzes past, taking out the front of an old dinner. She prays there was no one inside but knows better.

The four take a hard right and run into a doughnut shop for cover and a chance to regroup. Outside, the Whale searches for them, roaring and thrashing about like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Every so many seconds the cacophonous boom of falling buildings and explosions is punctuated by the shrieks of the terrorized, the trapped, and the dying.

"We can still catch it," Erin wheezes, raking a hand through her unbound hair. She lost her scrunchy somewhere between the warehouse exploding and the Ether Whale making it into the Lower East Side.

"I think we're beyond that point," Patty points out, sucking in air just as hard. "Our packs aren't doing shit. How do you plan on catching it if we can't even stop it?"

"That's because this thing has no psychokinetic energy." Holtzmann supplies, sliding heavily into a deserted booth. "It's a living entity. Our packs won't do much other than burn it."

"You couldn't have told us that a little sooner?!" Abby snaps, stemming the steady flow of sweat stinging her eyes and matting her hair flat with a rag from her pocket.

"I didn't' realize until just a bit ago. The beams burn and tangle its legs, but they won't stick like with ghosts because they aren't sucking away the psychokinetic energy."

"Great!" Abby throws her sweat-rag away, almost angry beyond words. "Now what do we do?"

"Crank up the power and combine the streams."

Everyone looks at Holtzmann, stunned. Outside, a car erupts into flames under one of the Whale's clawed feet.

"And risk blowing us all up?" Abby sputters. "You said yourself that's what would happen if we ever did that."

"Only if we cross them," Holtzmann says carefully, working out the math in her head. "If we stand close enough and angle the barrels so they almost touch, the combined energy would be like a laser beam to big boy. Maximum damage."

"How long can we keep the packs cranked that high?" Erin eases herself away from the counter.

"Five…maybe seven minutes?"

"That's not long enough to get it back to the warehouse."

"No, but it's long enough to hit it with this." Holtzmann sets her Buster-bag down and eases out a small silver box no bigger than a toaster. Judging by how gingerly she holds it, it's not a new toy the ladies would find tacked on to their weapons supply.

"What is it?" Patty asks dubiously, well aware of what Jillian Holtzmann could create in that mad-scientist lab of hers.

"Let's just say it will take care of our problem. I can't be held responsible for any side-effects, though."

All eyes turn to Erin. Containing the creature had been her idea, but it was becoming painfully clear not only had she miscalculated the scale of escalation, she misjudged how powerful the Ether Whale would actually be.

"All right!" she blurts, massaging her temples. "I admit I was wrong. We can't contain it."

"If this wasn't a life or death situation, I'd record that admission and make it my new ringtone," Abby snorts, but even she sounds relieved.

"Excellent. All we have to do—"

The window behind Holtzmann explodes, throwing three of the four women back while something long and slimy snakes around the blonde's throat and rips her backward just as the roof is pried off and tossed aside.

"Hol-Holtzmann!" Erin chokes on mortar dust and pushes her way free of the rubble covering her, ignoring the searing pain radiating from her left knee. Patty's head pops up as she uncurls from around Abby, the two protected by the counter that had landed on top of them.

"It's got Holtzmann! _It got Holtzman_!" Erin repeats in a terrified tangle of words, staggering out into the street.

Suspended in the air like a hangman with a slimy noose around her neck, Holtzmann struggles to breathe around the tight muscle squeezing her windpipe closed, fingers fighting to get under the tentacle.

Taking a hard left, the Whale throws itself into a row of tall buildings to counter it's uncoordinated skittering. No doubt it would have continued along its predetermined path had the tentacle holding the blonde not exploded, showering her in slime and grayish-purple flesh. Holtzmann plummets like a stone a solid thirty feet before being caught again, this time by her leg, by another tentacle somewhere along the Whale's underbelly. She repeats the maneuver—shoot, fall, shoot again— in an effort to free herself but ultimately only slows the Whale down.

"Hang on, Holtz!" Patty's voice drifts up from the ground below. She clutches her gun the tightest, knuckles turning a milky caramel color.

"Not really any place to go!" she shouts back. "The view is kind of nice, though!"

Racing to get into position, Erin, Patty, and Abby crank their packs to max and loosed their intertwined proton streams at the Whale's legs and sensitive underbelly. The force almost blows them off their feet. The heat alone bores through the beast's tough hide, filling the air with steam and the stench of burning flesh. It screams in fury and retreats, stumbling over itself to be away from the plasma fire licking its skin.

Still hanging partially upside down and swinging like a pendulum, Holtzmann notices a gap in the Whale's hide just behind one of its six legs, and a plan snaps into place. A few turned dials and her pack hums to life behind her, heat pouring from the coils. She'd never maxed out her proton pack before, so this would be a learning experience.

"Sorry, big boy. But you kind of brought this on yourself." Using her body weight to swing herself into range, she wedges her gun in the breech, pulls the trigger, and lets her proton pistol do the talking.

Roaring in pain, the Whale dives into a summersault. Holtzmann holds her position and forced her gun further into the hole until the Whale's leg is sheered from its body. Enraged, the beast attempts to dislodge the human and thrashes into a hard corkscrew, sending Holtzmann flying. She's airborne long enough to get off two more shots to one of the creature's eight unprotected eyes, partially blinding it in one face, before gravity reinstates itself. Her horizontal flight is abruptly interrupted by fractured asphalt and finally a half-crumbled apartment wall. The sound her body makes upon impact is like a sandbag hitting concrete after being launched by a catapult. Crumpling into herself, she doesn't rise again.

"Holtzmann!" Patty attempts to twist around and race to her friend, but something in the atmosphere changes and she's ripped forward as if pulled by a powerful magnet. All three women are dragged a dozen or more yards behind the flailing Whale that now finds itself tangled in glowing red and white proton streams. How or why this happened matters to no one. All they can focus on is holding onto their weapons or risk being thrown about like a rodeo cowboy.

"I was wrong!" Erin screams over the roar of her proton stream. The barrel of her gun was starting to turn white hot, a sure sign overload was eminent. "We should have never done this! We have to destroy it!"

"With what?!" Abby couldn't think, couldn't stop long enough to assess the impossible situation she and her friends were in. Her mind kept drifting back to Holtzmann lying unconscious and bleeding—or worse—fifty yards behind them. She needed help, but if even one woman stopped their assault, the Whale would escape and reenter the city.

"Holtzmann had a plan!" Patty has to readjust her grip on her gun, juggling hands like a game of hot potato. The G10 handle was starting to melt. "Where's her Buster-bag?"

One their backs and in their hands, proton guns and packs belched out sweet-smelling smoke as coolant discharges, bringing the glowing red coils back to a less critical level. They would be out of juice soon.

"I don't know! I don't know!" Has Abby ever felt this level of terror? No, not since being dragged into the portal two years ago and watching the world she knew cease to exist. "It was in the doughnut shop, wherever the hell that is now!"

Which meant impossible to get to in their current state. They needed a plan but nothing came to mind. Caught in a tug-of-war with a rampaging hell-beast, the situation was looking grimmer by the second. Provided they survived the proton pack overload, the three remaining Ghostbusters had nothing more to fight with until something moved behind them. A breath of wind washes over the three, raising goosebumps in its wake. The shock was so jarring two out of three heads turn to see what it was, but it was already flying past in a blur of tan and blonde.

"Holtzmann?" Patty and Erin gasp in unison.

Abby is a bit slower to redirect her attention from the monster tangled in her proton beam. When she does, she gasps too. "What are you doing?!" she shouts, fighting with the rest of her friends when the Whale rolls onto its side—dragging them closer by a dozen feet.

The blonde doesn't turn to address her friends. Her destination is clear. Head down, she bolts for the thrashing Ether Whale, a small device tucked under her arm. The creature shrieks and spits glowing blue and green slime from four mouths at once like an ectoplasmic fountain. Holtzmann somehow avoids most of it and continues her harried sprint. She doesn't bother setting a level to her machine once she's within range. It needs to max out, so instead she cranks the knobs until they break and gives the device a hard kick for good measure.

"Aim your beams at the box!" she shouts through cupped hands over the monster keening.

"Get out of the way!" Patty shouts back. "Or you're gonna be goo just like big boy!"

"Do it anyway!"

"Holtzmann, this isn't the time!" Erin snaps. She's beginning to lose her grip. The heat pouring from the pack on her back is starting to char her jumpsuit. "Get out of the way!"

"Shoot the box!"

"Move first!"

"I can't."

Holtzmann's words and the sad smile tugging up one corner of her lips take the women a second to register. Can't? Of course she could. She was right there…

The blonde points behind the three, filling in the blanks. Dread settles over the trio. No one wants to look. Abby does first and almost goes to her knees. Her world tips dangerously to one side. The keening of the Ether Whale is drowned out by the slamming of her pulse in her ears.

Behind her, still crumpled against the wall, is the body of one of her closest friends. Jillian's long, delicate fingers are still wrapped around her gun, index finger on the trigger. Blood has left two snaking red trails from her nostrils and cut across her cheek like a macabre checkmark. Her chest doesn't rise. Her body is still, eyes half-open in a glazed stare.

"Hello from the other side," Holtzmann—or her spirit anyway—says in a sing-song voice with another faint smile, attempting humor but not quite making it.

"No," Erin whimpers in shattered understanding. She's even paler when she turns around. A sob sticks in her throat, threatening to strangle her. "Please, no."

"Shoot the box," Holtzmann says softly, her voice carrying over the monster's cries. "Don't let it hurt anyone else. Be Ghostbusters and bust some ghosts. Catch or slime."

No one moves. The shock is too much, but stalling prolongs the inevitable and puts more lives at risk. Someone has to put the Whale back, and that person is Patty.

"I'm coming to get you," the tall woman snarls, holding her gun cocked against her shoulder like a marksman, training her sight along the barrel. There are tear stains on her cheeks, wet lines cutting through the mortar dust and grime. "You hear me, Holtzmann? I'm coming to get you, baby!"

"Got it, boss lady," the engineer nods and fires off a finger pistol. "Bend your knees when you shoot it. There's gonna be one hell of a blast."

Patty cuts the power to her gun. The Whale senses the breech and swings around to escape, but the human moves faster. Patty's proton beam hits the box dead-center. There's no delay in the explosion. The box goes up like a Roman candle.

One second the world is filled with keening and screaming and buildings falling like houses of cards and the next there's nothing but light. Erin, Patty, and Abby are kicked off their feet and thrown backward in a senseless tumble of flailing limbs and bouncing bodies. Eyes screwed shut on instinct, the trio don't witness the blazing arms of energy wrapping around the Whale like a sizzling plasma net. It cinches tight, dragging the creature down, down, down until its body can no longer take the pressure and explodes in a gory fountain of body parts, ecto-goo, and leftover pulses of residual ether. When the dust—and slime—finally settles there nothing but a smoking crater remaining.

"I think I ruptured my spleen," someone—Abby by the sound of it—grunts in obvious pain. A small chorus of displeased groans answer her—everyone is feeling their aches—until reality swings back into focus with all the gentility of a wrecking ball.

Three sets of eyes stare blankly at the decimation done to their beloved city. This wasn't like the last time when Rowan ransacked Time Square. New York City didn't reset and repair itself. The hole in the street where the Whale once thrashed had to be two hundred feet in diameter and at least six feet deep. Homes and shops were gone, blown backward with the force of the blast. It was a miracle the trio survived, being as close as they were, but none of them feel blessed. Staring in shell-shocked awe, it was hard to comprehend, especially what lie behind them.

It wasn't that anyone had forgotten. It just didn't feel real.

Hurried footfalls and the crunch of gravel draw Erin and Abby away from the apocalyptic destruction. Patty abandoned her pack and gun, throwing it off as she runs. Sliding to a stop on her knees, rubble digging into her jumpsuit, she rolls Holtzmann over with frantic care. Her hands are a blur, removing the blonde's pack and ripping open the front of her jumpsuit until her chest is exposed. Years of working at the MTA and doing mandatory, on-the-job training has taught her one very important thing. CPR.

"Don't think you're going to get away from us that quick. Nu-uh," Patty babbles, talking purely on terrified instinct, voice warbling. "Not gonna stick us with this mess to clean up all on our own."

Hand over hand, she starts compressions just like her instructor taught her. Patty doesn't have to pause to breathe. Throwing off her pack, Abby goes to her knees on the opposite side and pushes a breath into Holtzmann's lungs at the end of each compression set. She tastes blood and knows it's not hers. Her stomach rolls.

"Come on, Jillybean," Patty pants, using the nickname she knows Holtzmann hates most. "Come on, girl. I can do this all night. I will do this all night. Come on!"

"Holtzmann, I know you're around here!" Abby shouts from her knees, less in control of herself than Patty. "Get back in your body right now!"

She was starting to panic. How many minutes had passed? Abby was a scientist. She knew physics and machines and engineering. She also knew the basics about the human body and how long it took for the brain to deteriorate without oxygen. With each passing second, the gap between life and death grew that much wider. Addy felt this grim reality in her very core. Felt the tearing of her heart when she looked down at her listless best friend and realized there was a chance she wouldn't get to see her smile or laugh or dance or lip-sing to old 80's music in the lab again.

"This wasn't how it's supposed to be, man! I'm not burying you, Holtzmann. I'm not…" Patty faltered, breath catching on the lump in the back of her throat. "I'm not burying my friend. Not again. Not you. Come on, baby! Come back!"

Patty and Abby don't take notice of Erin's absence until she emerges from the rubble of a downed building limping hard on an injured leg and carrying a bright red medical box. She stumbles, blood trailing behind her in crimson droplets and heavily staining the thigh of her left leg, but doesn't stop her purposeful jog.

"Move," she barks roughly, her calm, careful demeanor gone. In its place stands a marble pillar of a woman, cold and calculating and fiercely determined. Her face betrays no emotion. That is reserved solely for her eyes and she's disintegrating inside.

Patty and Abby move back with the force of Erin's approach, understanding dawning on them. The slender brunette takes Abby's place. From her pocket, she pulls the Swiss Army knife Holtzmann gave her two years ago—the one that had saved her life on more than one occasion—and cuts open the front of the blonde's gray undershirt.

"Where did you find a defibrillator?" Abby gasps. She seems small now, deflated. Her whole body shakes.

"Saw it when we were running out of the doughnut shop," Erin replies, working in a mechanical rush. She was already freeing the palm-sized sticky pads and positioning them: one just above Holztmann's right breast and the other below her left. The machine whirs to life when she flips it on.

"There's nothing left of the doughnut shop."

"I dug it out." Which explained the cuts, both shallow and deep, marring her skin up to Erin's elbows.

"You're bleeding," Patty says as if Erin hadn't noticed the spreading crimson stain.

"I'm aware. Hands back."

It's the only warning she gives before deploying the machine. The defibrillator whirs once more before issuing a small pop. Holtzmann's body jolts slightly, rocked by the electricity. Patty checks for a pulse. None. She resumes compressions and breathing while the machine winds up again.

"How many more times can you do that?" Patty asks, eyes on her work. She's sweating now and her arms are cramping but stopping isn't an option.

"Three," Erin answers back after reading the flashing display. "It's an old machine."

"We need the paramedics."

"I tried. My cell's dead. I think the blast fried it."

"Shit… _shit_!"

It seems like the machine takes hours to recharge. Time slows to the singularity of compress, breathe, listen, compress, breathe, listen over and over again. When Erin deploys the defibrillator the women watch in anxious silence as the machine pushes electricity into Holtzmann's still chest cavity. They wait for something to change. It doesn't. There was enough juice for one more go. One more try. One more opportunity to save the life of a friend.

Erin wouldn't show it yet— it took time for her to fracture outwardly—but she was cracking. Had been since seeing two Holtzmanns, one dead and the other…well the other dead in an alive kind of way. She couldn't stop running scenarios. Could this have been avoided? Yes, it could have had she not been the one calling the shots. What had gone wrong…what had she done wrong? Easy. It had been her idea to investigate the warehouse. It had been her tripping on slime that tipped off the cult to her and her friend's position. She had been the one running into the street like a naïve, overeager child when the Ether Whale broke loose, forcing her friends to chase after her. Guilt crushed her slowly, squeezing hope and light from her body, but seeing Holztmann dead, because of her, succeeded in breaking her. Erin's mind was flying apart. Any minute now she would disintegrate. It was too much. It was all too much.

Third shock.

Jillian's chest comes partially off the ground. All three women wait until the defibrillator gives the all clear, breath held, teetering on a knife's edge. This time, something's different. It's small, almost too small to catch. There's a jump in Holtzmann's chest that has nothing to do with electricity. Patty sees it, and her fingers fly to Jillian's neck. At first, she thinks it's her imagination until…there! Her trembling fingers detect the faintest flutter of a pulse, and it's like finding water in the desert after a year-long drought.

"I got her!" Patty repositions herself, putting an ear against Holtzmann's chest. Erin and Abby are on the opposite side immediately, the latter of the two gripping the blonde's hand while Erin tucks into herself. Sure enough, Patty can hear a heartbeat and feel the slight expansion of the woman's chest. "That's right, baby girl," she grins in teary relief. "That's right. Come on back."

It takes a minute for her heartbeat and breathing to grow steady enough, but eventually Holtzmann jerks awake with a tight gasp, hazy eyes cracking open. She's slow to comprehend the world around her, but eventually, the haziness fades.

"Who's been tangoing on my chest?" she croaks, frowning at the discomfort. It felt like a truck decided to use her body as its personal parking spot. The tip of her tongue darts out, wetting her lips. "Why do I taste mango and iron?"

The trio dissolves into relieved exhalations. Erin can only manage to sink forward and rest her forehead atop Holtzmann's hip, the hot coil of terror in her chest turning to water that quickly finds itself leaking out her tear ducts. Abby won't drop Holtzmann's hand, clinging to it like it'll anchor her in the event she tries to leave them again.

Sliding her leg under the blonde's head, Patty puffs out her cheeks in a shaky exhale. "Don't you ever scare me like that again," she chokes, trying her best not to dissolve into tears.

"Not going anywhere, Mama Bear," she promises. "You're all stuck with me for a bit longer."

"Damn straight."

"I saw Elvis," she informs weakly, like its common news, lips quirking in an oh-so-familiar grin. "He wasn't all that cool. Prince was, though."

"You saw Prince?" Abby laughs tearfully, wiping at her eyes. "Not God or angels or heaven? That's kind of a rip-off. Get your money back."

"Watch your tongue, Missy." Holtzmann fake-scolds. "Prince is all of those things and more. Bowie danced with me, so that might have been heaven….or just the residual energy left over from plane jumping. Still cried. You okay down there, Gilbert?"

Erin was most definitely not okay, but she manages a smile. "Good to see you back. Don't ever do that again."

Patty eyes Erin closely. She's too pale, and the way she keeps swaying isn't reassuring.

"I love you too," Holtzmann winks. "But…if it's not too much trouble…please call an ambulance." As if to emphasize her point, she coughs up a foamy mixture of blood and saliva, wincing in pain as she does. "Yep, broken ribs," she grunts out, holding her side. "Maybe a ruptured stomach. Is it normal not to feel my feet?"

Luckily, someone was already a step ahead. Probably a lot of someones' judging by how far the Ether Whale rampaged. Within minutes the area is swarming with emergency response teams and army reserves. A trio of blue-clad paramedics take over for the standing Ghostbusters, settling Holtzmann onto a stretcher and tending to the remaining three.

Patty and Abby sustained minor cuts and contusions. Nothing antiseptic and bandaging wouldn't cure. Erin is a different story and is taken to the hospital alongside Holtzmann—who suffered a wide variety of breaks and fractures to her pelvis, ribs, shoulders, and right arm. By some miracle, her pack protected most of her spine, and she didn't sustain more than internal bruising. Erin's left knee was partially dislocated when the doughnut shop went down and she lost enough blood from a deep gash to the inside of her thigh and the bend of her wrist to worry the paramedics.

It's only when the quartet reach the hospital and the mayor's office stops calling that things start to settle down. Grouped together in a room away from the general public, the women take a moment to let what happened sink in. There aren't many words passed around. Someone tries to crack a joke, but the mood remains somber, even after a smuggled-in meal of pizza and Chinese food, courtesy of Benny and a very confused and concerned Kevin.

Eventually, three out of the four succumb to restless sleep, save for Holtzmann who was dosed with enough painkillers to stun a horse and had been snoring softly for the past half hour. Only Erin remains awake, watching the people who have, inexplicably, become her family doze. The guilt hasn't left her in peace and likely wouldn't. If anything, it had grown worse in the silence. Silence meant reflection, and that was the last thing Erin Gilbert wanted to do. Battered, bruised, bloody, and broken, her family made it out of this scrape by the skin of their teeth, but had it not been for her none of it would have happened.

Sitting up in bed, Erin picks absently at the logo patch on her jumpsuit. She needs something to do with her hands. An edge peels up, worn glue no longer adhering it to the fabric. She picks some more until it rips free and settles onto her blankets. Whether it was a sign or just her overactive mind, Erin takes the symbology to heart. Removal. Distance. Exile.

Gingerly she scoots to the end of the bed and sets her bare feet on the cold floor. Heart monitors beep around her—her own close by—until she flips the switch and removed the finder clap. Standing makes her wince in pain. The stitches in her leg pull tight under the gauze, but she can still walk and goes to the door after wrapping herself in a thin blue hospital robe. Her fingers are on the doorframe when a voice calls out.

"Going somewhere, Gilbert?"

Erin freezes. Her heart drops into her stomach and nests in the ice forming there. She's slow to turn around, schooling her face as she does so her emotions are hidden. "I'm sorry," she winces with a fake apology. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"That's not what I asked." Holtzmann's not smiling tonight, merely watching with those sharp eyes of hers. Erin feels them pierce her and fights not to fidget. Can she see the guilt too? Or can she see the decision the brunette has clenched tightly in her right hand?

"I just need some fresh air," she says a little more convincingly. "I've got…there's a lot to process."

"Mmm…" the blonde rumbles, still watching. She doesn't look nearly as fragile now. Bruised and beaten up but there's a fire in her eyes that won't be quenched. Eventually, Holtzmann shifts with a fair amount of effort into a semi-sitting position and puts out her hand, palm up. The gesture is small. The implications and gravity behind it aren't.

Erin feels herself shrinking away. Not out of disgust but out of something far more primal. Her left hand grips the door frame to the point her fingers turn white. Holtzmann holds her gaze, fierceness setting the angular planes of her face until she recognizes the fear leaking out of Erin like a fractured dam.

"Stay," she pleads softly, hand still outstretched. It's an olive branch, a gesture of peace and acceptance and love. Holtzmann's body says stay. Her eyes plead for something else: forgiveness. How? Why? After everything…

"I can't," Erin hiccups, tears sliding down her cheeks. She backs into the hallway, physically dragging herself away from the magnetic pull of what Holtzmann offers freely and willingly.

"Erin, stay with us," she says gently like she's coaxing back a frightened rabbit. Then more quietly, "Stay with me. Please."

Back nearly to the wall, Erin feels the broken shards inside herself fracture into billions of sharp fragments. The pain is too much. She's running before she realizes it, her feet moving on instinct. Behind her, she can hear Holtzmann's cries quickly picked up by Patty and Abby. Would they take chase? Would they care? Was that anger in their voices or pain? She didn't know as she fled out of the hospital and into the rainy October night. Just inside the hospital's automatic door a Ghostbusters patch drifts mournfully to the ground


	2. Chapter 2

Run fast. Run hard. Run far. Just run. Don't stop. No matter what, don't stop.

It was behind her, just a breath away, breathing down her neck. The monster would devour her, but it wasn't the Ether Whale she feared. It was a beast called guilt wreathed in the choking haze of a panic attack.

Erin's bare feet slap a fast tattoo on the wet pavement, sending up gouts of disturbed water as she powers through puddles. She wasn't an athlete by any stretch of the imagination, but two years of ghost-busting had conditioned her to move fast when she wanted to. And tonight she wanted to.

Rain beats down from the black sky above, soaking her thin robe and hospital gown until it's barely a translucent membrane against her skin. She doesn't know how she's running. Probably the toxic mix of painkillers and adrenaline in her blood. Her knee was partially dislocated earlier that afternoon. She had stitches in her thigh holding her skin closed. Somehow none of that mattered. All she could think about was running, and her body obliged in the worst kind of way.

What was she doing? Where was she going? Rationality had no space in the tangle of the physicist's mind. She couldn't think, couldn't untangle herself. That's what she needed. A place to think and breathe and cry alone, bleeding the emotions out until she was stable. A controlled environment.

But where to go? Where to hide? Where was it safe?

Safe. Nowhere was safe. But that's not true, a small part of her mind countered. She knew of a place where she could be safe and warm and cared for. Where she could be loved. The thought makes the panic circulating in her chest like an icy hurricane that much worse. She can't think about Patty or Abby or…Holtzmann. Can't think about the blonde's outstretched hand or the softness in her eyes.

'Stay with me'. Erin hears the gentle plea in her ears, loud of a bell toll, soft as a chime. It circles her like a bird of prey, darting in from the shadows to lash at her. Echoing over and over. _But I killed you!_ she wants to scream back. _I saw you die! My fault. My fault. My fault!_

Where was she going? Did it matter? Of course, it did, but the streets all looked the same. The people she passed, stumbled into, twisted away from were nothing more than mannequins, faces lost to the distortion of the rain. Erin's steps falter. Her heart is a battery ram in her chest. How is she sucking in enough air to keep conscious?

Rationality begins to dawn eight blocks from the hospital. Slow like a sunrise, it banishes the haze of fear until a truck thunders by, belching black exhaust fumes, brakes squealing. The rumble makes her chest vibrate. Erin slaps her hands over her ears. Suddenly, she's back in the alley, back in the chaos of the Whale's rampage. It's coming for her. She can hear it, almost see it turning the corner down the street. She has to run! Run again. Run away. Never stop running!

A street sign catches her attention when a car's headlights reflect the green and white material, breaking its way through the funhouse tilt of her mind. The letters mean something. Erin remembers a place she can go. It's not far. She could make it. Turning the corner, she runs down the street, the darkness of a rainy October night swallowing her.

* * *

"You get your ass back in bed right now," Abby snaps, carefully but firmly pushing a determined Holtzmann back against the mattress.

"Negative. I'm going to help look."

"Not with a fractured pelvis you're not."

"Hairline fracture, and I am," she repeats, swinging her legs over the side of the hospital bed with grunting effort.

"You're not," Abby holds her ground, hands on her hips. On this, she won't be budged. She'd already watched one friend almost die today. She wouldn't subject herself to that again. She couldn't. She wasn't strong enough to go through that kind of trauma a second time.

Holtzmann narrows her eyes in challenge. It was eerie seeing the mischievous woman so serious. "I am."

"Don't make me strap you to this bed, Jillian Holtzmann. As God as my witness, I'll show you a thing or two about knots!"

At any other time, Holtzmann wouldn't have passed up an opportunity to slide an innuendo into the conversation to lighten the mood. Tonight wasn't that time. The two women lock stares like stags locking horns. Patty hadn't returned yet from her search.

"Abby, you didn't see her," Holtzmann hisses, raking a hand through her unkempt blonde hair. It feels strange down. She wants to pin it back and get it off her neck. Looking down at her knees, she makes a vague gesture at her face, trying to coagulate her thoughts into words. "I've never seen anyone look like that. The fear. It was like…I just can't…"

"I've seen it," Abby admits quietly, losing a portion of her growl in a deflating sigh. She falls into a nearby chair, mind skipping back to high school. What a treat that was.

Holtzmann senses Abby's holding something back and leans forward as much as her broken ribs would allow. Funny how those slender bones could cause so much discomfort. "Abby?" she prompts when the silence stretches too far.

"The first time I met Erin," Abby begins, looking tired, "she was surrounded by half our sophomore P.E. class. I could hear the chanting from across the track. You know the kind. When kids turn words into weapons. Erin was pinned against a fence. Someone had thrown mud at her…knocked her books out of her hands. Standard school-yard bullying. Everyone was chanting 'ghost girl'. I'm pretty sure it would have turned into a proper hazing had the coach not caught on and I not put myself between her and the rest of the kids. I mean, I didn't know her from Adam, but no one deserves to be treated like that. When the kids ran off, I turned to apologize, but Erin was already backing away. The fear in her eyes…I won't ever forget it. It tears a hole through you."

Holtzmann can only nod, haunted by terror she watched strip rationality from Erin's face.

Before Abby can put a voice to her nagging curiosity—namely why Erin had run in the first place—Patty swings into the room. Judging by the sheen of sweat on her brow, she'd been moving hard and fast.

"Did you find her?" Holtzmann sits up straighter, tense as a guitar string.

The historian only shakes her head. When she does eventually speak, her voice is as tight as a drum skin. "I didn't find her, but I found something else." She opens her hand and lets Erin's Ghostbusters patch drift onto Holtzmann's bed. It might as well have been an anvil dropping into their stomachs. "I think Erin's outside."

"Are you freaking serious?" Abby gapes.

"Receptionist thought she saw someone run out the front door who looked like Erin. And if that's the case, we're in trouble. I checked my phone. It's forty-three degrees and raining…" The implications were plain. Things had just gone from bad to worse.

"Shit," Abby swears, bracing her elbows on her knees and hunching forward. "Shit! What the hell is she thinking?"

"Well, we can't exactly sit here and puzzle it out. I saw enough homeless in the subway get in a real bad way when the temp dropped like this. Best estimation? If Erin's outside, she's got about an hour before hypothermia sets in."

"We need to call the police." Abby slaps her thighs and stands abruptly. A shake of Patty's head stops her from reaching for the phone.

"They can't do anything for twenty-four hours."

"Right," the short woman scrunches her eyes closed, trying to organize her thoughts. "Right, I forgot."

"Then we're left with a pretty easy solution. Go out and look for her." Holtzmann heaves herself out of bed and manages to plant her feet. Pain explodes through her groin like a bullet impact when she attempts to extend her legs. She would have hit the floor had Abby not grabbed her and slung the blonde's uninjured arm over shoulder, using her body as support.

"Damnit! I told you, you're not leaving this hospital room."

"Does anyone else hear a weird buzzing sound?" Holtzmann asks, looking around and pretending she hadn't heard Abby and that she wasn't about to vomit from the pain. "Did I pop my eardrum again."

"Screw you, Holtz."

"There it is again!"

"I swear to God, I will throw you—"

"Baby," Patty sighs, stepping in front of the two. "Abby's right. You can hardly stand. How you going to walk all over New York?"

"Figured we'd be in a car."

"That's not the point. How are you going to get to the car?"

Mischief makes the engineer's blue eyes sparkle. Both women feel uneasy, especially when Jillian's signature half-grin slides into place. "No one said I had to walk."

Abby leans back, brow creasing. "What are you—"

"No," Patty says firmly, index finger raised to stop any more suggestions. "Absolutely not. Don't even think about it."

"But you're the tallest," Holtzmann argues. Her grin grows. "And the strongest."

"Oh my god," Abby sighs and hangs her head, understanding dawning.

"You're not spider-monkeying on my back, Holtzmann."

"You two do realize either I come with you or I'm figuring out a way to make this bed mobile. I'll do it. I'll drive this thing around the city like my own magic carpet."

Patty and Abby go silent, expression varied. The quiet stretches for a few heartbeats.

"Crap. You know she'll do it, too," Abby whispers out of the corner of her mouth, refusing to look Holtzmann in the face. Patty doesn't say anything because her look says it all. She mimes putting her hands around the blonde's throat but reluctantly turns and crouches down.

"Excellent!" Arms winding around Patty's neck, Holtzmann sucks in a breath, bracing for the pain, and grips with her legs. As expected, it's torture, but bearable torture. She rests her chin on Patty's shoulder.

"I really hate you right now, you know that?"

"You love me."

The tall woman snorts. Whether it's affirmation or derision, it's hard to tell.

"Carry me, you will," Holtzmann says in her best Yoda impression. "Find our lost friend, we must."

"Man, you're lucky you're so light," Patty grumbles. "And you're lucky I don't knock your stupid ass out for talking me into this. The doctors are going to lose their minds."

"We'll just tell them we got abducted by ghosts. We're the Ghostbusters. It'd be par for the course."

* * *

Cold. There's so much of it. Cold hands. Cold arms. Cold feet. It seeps into Erin like a toxin, making her joints creak and lungs burn. The hands she has locked under her armpits ache with it. Puddles bite back at her with stinging blows. Her breath no longer fogs around her head. Cars shoot past in blurred lines of red and white. Where was she? How long had she been running? The sky was still dark. Maybe an hour? Maybe more?

It was cold.

Erin wanted warmth. Craved it. Shivered with the need and sought it out like a moth drawn to a flame. She knew where to find it—where it would come in an endless supply—but ran from it because of the voices and the monsters and the fear.

Secondary warmth would do.

Shivering makes her teeth chatter, but her body refuses to cave into the chill. Not when a white-hot nucleus of panic and dread burns just below her heart, melting the ice like a stubborn furnace. Her steps become ragged. Unsteady. She stumbles into things, stumbles over her own feet.

Streets become personal battles Erin doesn't even realize she's waging. Her brain—usually so crisp, rational, and analytical—has lost touch with the rest of the body and the world around her. She moves with dream-like instinct, unaware of the crimson streak she's leaving in her wake. It pools in the echoes of her footsteps from the steady dribble down her leg. Pain has long since become a distant memory. The cold steals the sensation away, robbing her of the knowledge she was losing too much blood too quickly.

It's not until Erin emerges from an alley like some kind of drenched wraith that the fog lifts. A house rises out of the darkness to greet her, shattered windows watching her from the gloom. In her ears, she can hear the laughter: hers and Abby's. Fond memories. Fonder, simpler times. This was it. This was her salvation. An abandoned building dressed in shaggy disrepair and creeping ivy. Her journey was complete.

Erin staggers to the side door. The front was boarded up and tagged with graffiti. Her trembling right hand reaches for the oxidized, ornate door handle with its push-thumb latch. It's like shaking hands with a beloved colleague. Sweet relief floods her, and she's falling before she can register the movement. Shoulder hitting the door, her legs fail. The ground crashes up to meet her. Something snags her arm, holding it aloft.

She's cold. So cold. It's invading her chest now, worming in like icy snakes. Squeezing her breathless. Erin's panic is brief. In a flash of sanity, she understands what's happening…what she had done. _Help_ , her mind screams, pleads, begs. Her tongue and lips refusing to articulate the cry.

It's cold. Mind-numbingly so. The world spins, goes dark, and takes her with it.

* * *

Turns out sneaking away from a hospital was easier that any of them planned, which was mildly disconcerting on the medical facility's part. Taking the same stairwell Erin used in her great escape, the three women make it to the parking garage where Ecto-1 was parked—thanks to Patty's uncle—and climb inside. The pain of sitting on the hard seats takes Holtzmann's breath away, but she weathers it without complaint.

The trio check the firehouse first. According to Kevin, no one has come or gone all day, but the muscular receptionist couldn't exactly be relied upon for noticing things. So Abby and Patty search the building while Holtzmann sits in agony on the couch. She'd never experienced pain like this before. It circles her chest like bands of fire, preventing her from fully inhaling. Her pelvis felt like it had gone three rounds with Tyson. She barely hears Patty and Abby return, too focused on wrangling the pain and not passing out.

"She's not here," Abby announces, hurriedly coming down the stairs. She's changed out of her jumpsuit along with Patty and holds out Holtzmann's green overcoat and a tattered pair of sweatpants for her to take. The blonde accepts the garments with a strained smile. All she had on was her hospital gown. It was rather breezy in the back. "And it doesn't look like she's been here recently."

"Maybe she's playing hide-and-go-seek?" Kevin adds in cheerfully. Patty gives him an 'are you serious?' look, but for once the trio is thankful for his blissful unawareness. None of them knew how to deal with an emotionally compromised Kevin.

"I don't think she's playing hide-and-seek," Patty huffs then adds quietly. "At least, not the fun kind."

"Well, I'll call the guys and ask. Maybe she's practicing for the finals, too. If anyone can find Erin, it's my guys."

Despite Kevin completely missing the magnitude of the situation, Abby can't help but feel her chest warm. Kevin meant well. He might be dumber than sand, but he was trying in his own way. And ten extra sets of eyes were more than welcome at this point.

"Thank you, Kevin," Abby says. "That's very sweet of you."

"Welcome, boss," he winks, still playing with his rubber band.

"Okay, so if she's not here, where is she?" Patty adopts her wide thinking stance, arms over her chest. "Hotlz, you were the last to talk to her. Did she say anything?"

"Wasn't really talkative," Holtzmann admits, gingerly sliding on her sweatpants. Abby assists as much as she can to make the process less grueling. "I did most of the talking."

The historian squints, suspicious. "Care to elaborate?"

"I asked her to stay."

"Stay? With us?" Abby gestures to the group. Her eyebrows almost shoot off her forehead and embed themselves in the ceiling. "She was leaving the group?"

"I got that impression, so I asked her to stay…" Holtzmann trails off. She picks at her thumb cuticle. The look on Erin's face. The fierce glow of her terrified eyes. It's enough to make the engineer's stomach sour. _God, Holtzmann, when you fuck up you really fuck up_.

"But?" Patty prompts, drawing the word out.

The blonde sucks in a breath, holds it, then lets it out in a rush of words. "I didn't just ask her to stay with us, I asked her to stay with me."

Shocked silence, followed quickly by understanding.

"Oh…oh, Holtzy." Patty puts a hand over her mouth, half to hide her smile and half to cap her shock. "Baby, you have the _worst_ timing."

Abby can't say much. It wasn't like she didn't have her suspicions, but it wasn't her place to break barriers that had nothing to do with her. Still, she can't exactly hide her lopsided smile. It was about time, but like Patty said, Holtzmann had the worst timing.

"It wasn't like I planned it to happen that way!" Holtzmann says defensively. "It was the first thing that came to mind. I just…"

"We know, man. You don't have to say anything." Patty comes and sits on the edge of the sofa, running her hands through the engineer's hair like she usually does when she's upset.

"It's my fault she ran."

"No, knowing Erin, she was already panicking," Abby sighs. "I should have realized something wasn't right when we got back to the hospital, but this day…it's not been all that easy to come to grips with, you know?"

Both women nod.

The next two stops yield the same result as the firehouse. Erin wasn't at her apartment, nor was she at the library or her old university. By this point, it became evident professional help was needed. Despite knowing it was a long shot, Patty calls the police, but with the mayhem brought along by the Whale's rampage, the city's forces were spread thin. There wasn't enough manpower to search for one missing woman, not even a Ghostbuster.

Glasses propped on top of her head, Abby buries her face in her hands and tries not to scream. This was hopeless. Finding a single person in the middle of New York? They had a better chance of finding Jimmy Hoffa.

"Come on, girl, think!" Patty hitches her hip on the hood of the hearse. Holtzmann leans out one of the back windows, watching. "You've known her the longest. Where would she go?"

Head in her hands, Abby can't say for certain she really knows, and how depressing was that? After over a decade of separation only to reunite again, Abby hadn't really wanted to admit the Erin she knew now wasn't the same Erin she had known in the past. This Erin had ten years to build a life for herself. Ten years to create new haunts and hiding places outside of Abby's radar.

"I don't know," the short woman groans. She felt like kicking something. The hearse's bumper would have broken her foot—Patty would have likely broken her neck, too—so she refrains. "I've thought of everything."

Frowning, Patty squats down, hands on Abby's knees. The rain-slicker she nabbed before leaving is still slightly moist. Abby's too. "Take a breath. Start again. There has to be a place. Your old high school?"

Abby shakes her head. The rain had stopped but her breath fogs when she exhales. It was getting colder. They had been searching for four hours. "Erin wouldn't be caught dead walking those halls."

"Okay," the tall woman amends, searching. "What about after high school?"

"We went to the University of Michigan. I highly doubt Erin made it across state lines in a night."

"You didn't see how fast she was running," Patty mutters under her breath. "What about—"

"Wait!" Abby snaps to attention. For the first time that night there's a spark of fire in her eyes. "Wait, there was the old Frederick house!"

"The what?"

"I'll explain on the way. Get in." Revving the engine to life, Abby peels out of the university parking lot, squealing Ecto-1 tires and apologizing to a wincing Holtzmann. "When Erin and I first started getting serious about our book we spent a week at the old Frederick house in Lenox Hill. The house was supposedly haunted. We spent more time spooking ourselves and writing than chasing ghosts. It was the best summer either of us had since graduation."

"Think Erin would go there?"

"I think anything's possible, and it's the best lead I have."

Traffic slows them. Even with the Whale's manifestation down on the East Side, it's presence affected the city like ripples in a pond. Getting from the university to Lenox Hill took time. Time the trio knew they had little of.

When the white and red hearse screeches to a stop outside a dilapidated house that looking like something plucked out of the Amityville Horror it's almost one in the morning. Standing on the curb, Abby waits for Patty to climb out, her mind shooting back to the summer she and Erin spent here. It had been both a beginning and an end for the women in some way, shape, or form. Friendship would eventually sour and wither after that week. Work would be abandoned. New career fields would be chosen. Funny how fate worked in full circles.

"I don't like the look of this place," Patty grumbles. "Nu-uhu. Not one bit."

"It's not haunted," Abby answer as if reading Patty's thoughts.

"Other things can haunt a building besides ghosts," Patty says, eyeing the graffiti.

"Holtzmann, wait here."

"Sure. Got yah. Not really any place to go, but thanks for the suggestion," the blonde calls as the two make their way around the side of the house. No way Erin went through the front door.

There was little light in the alley. Ambient streetlight from the road stretches their shadows into distorted black pillars. Patty pulls a flashlight from her pocket and lights it up. The darkness is banished in a flood of white, and the two women stop dead. Abby feels her heart lurch. Patty gasps, a prayer whispered under her breath.

Something small and blue sits curled against the backdoor. pale skin turned canvas-white in the flashlight beam.

"Erin?"

Abby hesitates stepping closer. Living in the city, she learned early on not to approach strange people in alleys. Could be an addict. Could be worse. Better safe than sorry. Abby has to repeat herself twice before the waterlogged, frail-looking woman looks up. Relief hits her like Bahama breeze. She races forward—wanting to wrap her friend in a hug and never let go—but stops cold when Erin skitters back. Knees pressed against her chest, she stares wild-eyed at Abby like a frightened animal over the arm snared in the door handle.

"Hey, it's me," Abby reassures with a frown, moving again.

"No," Erin sputters in an almost unintelligible mumble, shaking her head violently enough she loses coordination and bumps it against the paint-chipped door beside her.

"Okay, okay," Abby amends, holding out her palms and patting the air to show she was compliant. Patty cuts her a worried look. Abby mouths a 'what do I do?' to the taller woman.

"It's gotta be shock. Talk to her. Keep her talking."

"Erin, it's Abby. Patty's here, too," she begins, miming for Patty to slowly make her way around the skittish woman in case she decides to bolt.

No response. Erin's stare is as vacant as it is terrified. Her dilated eyes shine like black buttons in the low light. She doesn't seem to recognize the women, so Abby tries a different tactic.

"Sweetie, we've been looking for you all night," she says softly like she talking to a child, easing herself down into a crossed-leg sitting position. Her smile is forced but she tries to make it reassuring. Abby flicks a look at the abandoned home.

"You know, if you wanted to check out our old haunt all you had to do was ask." She attempts to inject a small sliver of humor into the conversation, but it breaks against Erin like a wave against a cliff face. "Do you remember this house? We spent a week here hunting ghosts and writing our book. You were bitten by a rat on the toe. Had to get you a rabies shot."

Silence.

The short woman presses on, scooting fractionally closer. "You look cold. It's been raining all night. We should get you dried up and warm. Pretty miserable sitting in wet clothes, but at least it's not slime, eh?"

Vacancy.

Abby is running out of conversational lures. Her eyes meet Patty. The taller woman has made it past Erin and stands behind her by five or so feet. If the brunette notices she doesn't let on. "Erin, you ran from the hospital. Do you remember that? Holtzmann said—"

"Dead." The word is spat out like a bullet, harsh and fast. Erin's stare over her snared arm is intensely unsettling. Something akin to life returned to her eyes, but it was far from the sane, rational woman Abby and Patty know and love.

"Dead?" Abby repeats, frowning like the word tastes sour. "Holtz? No, honey, she's not dead. You saw her a few hours ago."

"Dead," Erin repeats. "Watched her. Saw her…one the ground."

"Honey, she's not dead. You helped bring her back, remember? The defibrillator? That was you."

"My fault. My fault. My fault," Erin stutters, gaze going glassy with tears, breath coming in gulps. "She died. I saw her hit the wall. She didn't get back up. Didn't get back up."

"Baby," Patty interjects gently, "it wasn't your fault. Okay? None of this was your fault."

The brunette begins to shake, fresh panic setting her blood on fire. "We should have never been there. I'm sorry. We shouldn't have been there! Please, I'm sorry," Erin begs. "I was wrong. Please, I didn't mean for this to happen! I didn't mean for you to die!"

Abby feels her calm demeanor slip. Erin wasn't looking at her. Her line of sight had shifted to something just over Abby's shoulder. The short woman flicks a look down at the small beeper attached to her belt. Each Ghostbuster had one on them constantly to help detect paranormal activity and manifestations. The lights on her beeper are still. Patty's too. The tall woman holds it up for Abby to see, her face losing a shade of color.

"Baby, you need to breathe. Holtzy is okay," Patty reassures. She's half the distance to Erin she was before they began, steps as careful as a hunter's. "Remember? You two talked in the hospital. We all did before we fell asleep."

"Gone," Erin repeats three times, each word losing steam. She starts to slide into unconsciousness, eyes rolling shut. "Because of me. Because of…because—"

Patty springs into action. Swooping in, her arms are around the wet woman before she could put up a fight. There wasn't one. Erin is limp in her strong arms, head tipped back and wet hair swinging.

"We gotta move. Now." Patty sprints for the car, Abby keeping stride.

"Shouldn't we call the paramedics?"

"Ain't no time. I can make it back to the hospital before they could get here."

Sitting in the back of the hearse like an obedient pet, Holtzmann fidgets with a loose seam in the seat. The engineer never felt more useless. Caught in negative self-reflection, she doesn't see her friends' fast approach until they are practically next to the car. When Holtzmann looks up she feels the air sucked from her lungs. Her eyes can only see one thing.

Erin draped in Patty's arms.

Erin soaking wet.

Erin not moving.

Broken arm or not, Holtzmann grabs for the physicist when Abby jerks open the back passenger door and pulls her into her lap. Her fractured pelvis and ribs shriek. She suppresses the pain, attention honing onto just one thing.

Erin is freezing. The shock makes Holtzmann grunt. She doesn't know biology, but a human should ever be this cold. It was a death sentence. Her instinctive thought was that Erin needed a jacket, and she just happened to have one handy.

Keeping the brunette pressed against her warm chest, Holtzmann shrugs out of her green waistcoat—the one Erin insisted was too threadbare to wear anywhere but the lab—and wraps it around the woman's shoulders. Down at the other end of the seat, Abby wraps her friend's lower half in her own coat and begins rubbing Erin's legs, building up friction, attempting to raise her body temperature. Holtzmann mimics her, rubbing Erin's shoulders and back with furious purpose.

Sliding across the hood of the hearse like it's a Dukes of Hazard movie, Patty jumps into the driver's seat and floors the gas. Ecto-1 takes off like a bullet, sirens screaming.

"Where did you find her?"

"In the alley against a door," Abby stammers. She's as pale as a sheet.

"Erin?" Holtzmann calls, still rubbing warmth back into the woman. "Come on, Gilbert. Come on, wake up. We've got you. Wake up." Was that a hint of blue on Erin's lips? Was her breathing getting shallower? No, no, no, this can't be happening.

Patty takes a hard left, tires squealing. Cars and streetlights rip past, Ecto-1's emergency light bathing the street in yellow flashes.

Erin shakes, her body devouring the warmth of Holtzmann's body heat like parched desert soil soaking up rain.

"Hey," Holtzmann smiles warmly when the brunette's eyes flutter open, "there you are."

Erin struggles to stay conscious and focused. Confusion crinkled her brow. "You're…dead," she grates out. "Watched y-you…"

"Nah, you got me here in the flesh," Holtzmann say with a lopsided grin. To emphasize her point, she carefully slides Erin's matted hair to one side, fingertips lingering against her cheek before her palm settles over the woman's frigid skin.

What was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to fix this? Holtzmann was an engineer. She knew how to weld and solder and stick foreign objects together and shockingly make them work. She could break apart blueprints and advanced calculations in her head in seconds. She could create and build so much, but for the life of her she didn't know how to fix the situation she was in. It left her mind reeling. She felt like crying. Felt like screaming. Felt like wrapping her arms around Erin and holding her close so she knew, to the depths of her marrow, how much she wanted her to live…to stay…to stay with her.

As the hearse rockets through intersections and traffic, Holtzmann bends into the crook of Erin's neck. Under the smell of wet cloth and damp hair, the blonde picks up on the physicist's scent. Flowery perfume, women's deodorant, fabric softener, coffee, tea, and her unmistakable personal scent. She breathes it in, holding her close, and begins to rock and hum. Not loudly, at first. Just a few bars, but as worry descends into fear and finally into panic, Holtzmann begins to sing.

A little-known fact about Jillian Holtzmann: she could carry a decent tune. She never sang unless completely comfortable with the people around her, but sometimes it was a fear response. This was one of those time. She wasn't particularly fond of Journey. Knew most of their greatest hits, but it wasn't a band she could really rock out to. Erin, however, loved the band, so Holtzmann made an effort to memorize the brunette's favorite song with the intention of lip-singing to it her at some point.

"They say that the road ain't no place to start a family," she sings, lips close to Erin's ear, arms tight around her. Next to her, Abby snaps her head up. "Right down the line it's been you and me."

Patty glances back in the rearview mirror before taking a hard right and nearly clipping a trash truck. They were a block from the hospital. The call had already been made. Paramedics were waiting for them. They just had to make it in time.

"And lovin' a music man ain't always what it's supposed to be." Holtzmann sits back a little so she can see Erin's face. Her eyes are half-lidded, heavy, but trained on her. A stray tear slips out of the corner of Jillian's eye, her voice warbling. She smooths Erin's cheek with her palm, thumb rubbing just below her eyes. "Oh girl, you stand by me. I'm forever yours, faithfully."

In her head, she can hear the bars and chords to the song playing, but her singing voice fails her. She's shaking too much.

"Please don't leave," Holtzmann whispers, her forehead against Erin's, eyes scrunched shut. "Just got you back. Just found you again. Stay with me. Please." Then more quietly, like the words are fragile and must be handled with care. "I love you."

Two sets of blue eyes meet and hold the other's stare for a heartbeat until one rolls shut involuntarily. Holtzmann doesn't have time to react. Her door is being thrown open and there are hands reaching in. Someone grabs Erin, pulling her away, taking half of Holtzmann's heart with her. The blonde glimpses a gurney and an oxygen mask, hears nurses shouting, can't comprehend what they're saying. Patty stands by her door, hand over her mouth. Abby moves to Holtzmann's door and crouches down.

"Jillian!" The engineer jerks around to look at her. Abby never uses her name unless it's important. How many times had the short woman called to her? "You need to get inside too. The doctors want to take a look at you, too."

Can she really object? Numb, Holtzmann is helped into a wheelchair. Her friends follow fast on the heels of the doctors and nurses, but at some point, the crowd splits into two: one for Erin and one for Holtzmann. The physicist is wheeled through a double set of doors at the end of a static-white hall. Holtzmann catches one last glimpse of dark hair and pale skin before the doors swing shut like the period at the end of a sentence.


	3. Chapter 3

Her heat-starved body shakes in an effort to manifest its own, muscles quivering like they've been possessed by writhing snakes. The effort fails. She's too cold. Too close to the ground. Too wet. Too weak. Her shaking becomes involuntary as does her fleeting moments of consciousness. By now the cold has invaded her brain. She's so tired. So very tired. She just wants to sleep…

Then suddenly there's a shift in the atmosphere. A pinprick of something new. Her body registers a change her cold-addled brain is slow to comprehend.

Warmth.

When it finally comes—had there ever been a more blissful feeling?—it's in fits and starts, blasting tiny holes in the icy coffin closing in around her. The cold is still there, but it's diminished somehow. Chased away. Fleeing. But despite its retreat, Erin feels like she's trying to catch smoke with her hands. She starts to slip again, sliding back down a black-ice slope until she's wrapped in an embrace so profoundly powerful it raises her out of unconsciousness and brings her face to face with a strange kind of saving grace.

A pair of familiar blue eyes stare back at her, framed in locks of frizzy blonde. Erin can't remember who the eyes belong to, but they harbor a message for her in the topaz and cerulean fractals. But the world is too foggy, she was too foggy, and can't comprehend what's being said to her. At least she was warm. That was Erin's last solid thought before falling into a comfortable sort of darkness.

Her drift back from the void an indeterminable time later was like being cradled in a nova's glow. It enveloped her on all sides, holding her close with tender gentility and…singing.

Somehow, the sound wasn't off-putting. Quite the contrary. Erin can hear gentle notes and chords lilting through the suffusion of golden light that seems to glow above her. The melody is familiar…comforting. The voice singing it is even more so. She can't place it. Not yet. But Erin allows herself to be buoyed back through the ceiling of consciousness, tethered to a melody she couldn't quite place.

The first thing she becomes aware of is the rhythmic beep of a heart monitor. It grates against the silence and fading tendrils of music one sharp jump at a time. The second is the rush of an oxygen machine and the gentle pressure of warm air being pushed into her nostrils.

 _I'm in the hospital_.

It shouldn't have been a surprise, but it was. Hadn't she just left?

Cracking open her eyes, Erin has to blink half a dozen times to clear her foggy vision. The room was dark—shades drawn tight against the afternoon sun—but not difficult to discern. Tiled ceiling. Cream-colored walls. Circular sitting chairs. Shiny monitoring equipment. IV bags. Yep, hospital staples. She'd been tucked snugly into a firm yet comfortable bed raised at a forty-five-degree angle. Her feet poke up under a blue thermal blanket which stops just shy of her armpits.

Erin moves to rub the sleepy film from her eyes. Pauses. Looks down. _When did I get an I.V.?_ she wonders, staring blankly at the bend of her right arm and the needle imbedded in her skin under a strip of tape.

She attempts to shift into a sitting position and feels a binding pressure around her left knee. Something other than skin slides against the underside of her thin hospital gown. Feels like gauze. An attempt to bend her leg elicits a pain response that has her hissing back against her pillow.

 _Okay, no moving that leg. Maybe no moving at all. That would be best._

Hand pressed against her forehead like it's the only thing holding her skull together, Erin attempts to piece together her fragmented memory. It was like trying to sort similarly colored puzzle pieces. There was an order to things— a rhyme and reason to shapes and angles—but she can't quite work it out. The last solid memory she had was standing in the hallway staring at…

Erin feels her chest tighten. The heart monitor beside her jumps in tempo.

Holtz with her hand out.

Holtz watching her with sharp eyes that always saw too much.

Holtz whispering a soft plea.

Holtz begging her to stay.

And then Erin's tearing away and bolting down the hall. The physicist grinds her teeth against the onset of unwanted tears. Guilt wasn't an uncommon sensation for her. She'd lived most of her life jumping from one guilty lily pad to the next. Ever since her fallout with Abby—which had been years ago but the sting remained a stubborn companion—it had become Erin's longest running pastime. Today the sobering blow felt especially brutal.

She doesn't want to grapple with herself right now. In pain, still struggling under the hazy cloud of anesthesia, and exhausted, it takes almost everything in Erin to push her negative self-reflection away, but it swings back like a ball on a string to smack her square in the face when something clicks in her mind.

There was no one with her in the room.

Erin had woken alone in a hospital bed with no memory of getting there or what had happened. Her stomach bottoms out. She scrambles to attach herself to a rational train of thought like someone clawing for a life preserver but lacks the energy to prop herself up with flimsy lies. Not when hard fact remains.

She was alone, and it was her own choosing, too. She'd run from her family out of shame, and they hadn't chased after her.

Fresh tears slip down Erin's face faster than she can paw them away. There's a cold kind of betrayal lingering behind her ribcage she wants to dig out with the closest blunt object. A familiar, unfriendly voice rises in her mind. _Friendless_ , it jeers. _Worthless. Broken. Lonely freak. You pushed them away and ran. What did you expect would happen? You almost killed Holtzmann. In fact, you did kill her. Did you really think they'd want you around after that?_

Her sob is a hard one, twisting her face in the process. She wanted to scream but keeps it firmly locked behind the cage of her teeth. When had things gone so wrong? Easy answer. When she thought she knew best and almost killed her family.

Wrestling to figuratively keep her head above water, Erin clenches her hands into fists, bearing down on her back molars until her temples pound. Holding her breath always used to help prevent—or at the very least forestall—a complete breakdown, but the brunette isn't strong enough. Head tipped back, she lets the pain wash over her like a dark kind of baptismal fire.

When Erin finally sucks in enough air to calm herself some time later—sniffing hard through swollen nostrils—she loosens her clench and feels something peel off the palm of her right hand. The sensation is curious and actually gives her pause. Through the haze of her watery vision, Erin turns her hand over opens it for the first time. Shock hits her like a sobering bucket of ice water.

It's her Ghostbuster's patch. The same one she tore off her jumpsuit. Erin can still see a few frayed tan threads stubbornly clinging on. How? It slipped from her fingers while running out of the hospital, presumed lost to the night. How was it here in her hand now...

Funny thing about darkness, it only takes a tiny crack and the light comes pouring in.

Someone put her patch in her hand while she slept. It was the only reason it would be there and not blowing down a street. And somehow, she doesn't have to question who put it there. Erin holds the worn piece of fabric to her lips like she's about to make a wish. Praying wasn't her thing. Hadn't been since she was eight, so this wasn't a prayer she sent up but a thread of hope. Maybe, just maybe, things weren't entirely lost after all.

Energy spent, the physicist can feel herself sliding back into unconsciousness. The anesthesia she'd woken from wouldn't leave her in peace, but that was to be expected. Erin slips back to sleep, carried away by a sense of warm relief, proving Holtzmann wasn't the only one with terrible timing. Not a minute later, Abby and Patty swing into the room, completely unaware their friend had awoken in their absence. And they would have remained ignorant to this fact had Abby not noticed the tear streaks trailing down her best friend's face and the hand clutching her patch resting on her chest.

* * *

The next time Erin wakes she's aware of a strange pressure bearing down on her right side and something tickling her nose. She scrunches up her face, trying to turn away. Fails. Groans in irritation and forces open her eyes, coming face to face with a mess of…hair? It looks like someone scalped a lion, and it takes her a moment to understand that what she's seeing isn't some misplaced Halloween wig.

Only slightly alarmed and completely confused, Erin looks around and notices with a fair bit of surprise she's not in the same hospital room as before. She knew this one, had memorized the layout while she sat on her bed listening to her friends' sleep, her fingers working the patch from her jumpsuit. She was in Holtzmann's room, and that same woman appeared to be curled against her right doing a marvelous impression of an oversized house cat. Her head rests on Erin's chest like she'd fallen asleep to the sound of her heartbeat.

Erin freezes. It's instinctive. Without the breathing tubes in her nostrils, the engineer's familiar scent fills her nose. Jillian smells like metal and musk and spice. She smells like the air before a storm, electric but earthy. Smells like home. Briefly, Erin's mind goes blessedly still.

She feels like a thief, stealing peace and hoarding it with jealous care. Holtzmann's weight is an anchor she didn't know she needed, and Erin gladly lies beneath it, thankful she has something capable of tying her down.

But the sensation doesn't last. It was never meant to. Not when Erin opens her eyes again and notices the arm Holtzmann has slung across her midsection—fingertips ghosting against her hip—is encased in a cast already bearing scribble-marks.

Reality bites back. The heart rate monitor jumps in time with Erin's increasing pulse until she rips it off her finger to silence the noise.

Unbidden and unwanted, she remembers Holtz launched from the Ether Whale and hitting the ground. Her body looked like a rag doll, limbs flopping due to inertia and momentum. She might as well have been a skipping stone on concrete, bouncing the way she did. Then she hits the wall. Hard. The sound actually carries. Erin remembers. How could she not? Bone breaking. Flesh tearing. Body dying…soul leaving.

 _Hello from the other side_ , she hears Holtz sing-song, sees her spirit's sad smile.

The hard knot rising in Erin's throat makes her swallow hard. Cold seeps into her veins. It was like she couldn't escape it, and she would have likely slipped into murkier waters had Erin not sucked in a sharp breath, inadvertently jarring the sleeping woman on her chest.

Holtzmann jerks awake with an undignified snort, coughing as she does. Something to be said about the enigmatic engineer: she wasn't a pretty sleeper. Lazily, Jillian looks around, lost in post-sleep haze, until something clicks. Her head whips around, unbound hair swinging.

Erin draws back. Had she ever seen eyes so intense? In the hazy corridors of her mind, she thinks she has, but it still leaves her breathless. Iridescent blue orbs—free of yellow lenses or goggles—bore into hers with unnerving intensity.

"Erin…"

Her name on the engineer's lips is spoken like a summons. Like a prayer. Erin isn't given the chance to offer a timid "hi" or brace. The charged tension shatters when Holtz drags her forward into a crushing embrace that nearly takes Erin's breath away. In fact, it does, due to its suddenness.

"H-Holtzmann?" she wheezes, rigid with shock, hot pain flashing down her jostled left leg. Her mind fills with static. What was she supposed to do? Hours ago—or so she assumed—this exact scenario had been what she dreaded and feared. But now, torn between conflicting emotions, she was rooted.

Erin knew the engineer was a tactile being. Holtz was most at home when invading personal spaces. Even when around Erin, she was constantly peering over the top of her head, drumming fingers across her back, or resting her chin on Erin's shoulder. It had taken the physicist time to acclimate to such abrupt and random invasions, but she'd come to enjoy Holtzmann's closeness, gleaning a sense of shy calm whenever she was near.

But this moment was something else entirely.

This was a need for grounding. A need for reassurance. A need to be reminded a flesh and blood being sat facing her and not the nightmare she'd woken from.

Erin can feel Holtz's desperation in the way she tightens her grip and tucks into herself like her center mass was being sucked away.

"Thought you were gone," Holtz hiss in an almost unintelligible tangle. It sounds like she's speaking through gritted teeth. Her shaking intensifies. "I didn't know what to do. Couldn't…couldn't find you. Couldn't fix it. Couldn't fix you!"

Startled into action when Holtzmann begins to quietly sob, Erin reaches into the mass of frizzy locks like she's pushing back bulrushes. Her hands seek and find hot cheeks. The temperature difference between the two is astonishing. "Hey, hey," she soothes, lifts Holtzmann's head with concerned gentility. "I'm right here."

Intertwined panic and pain greet her when the two make eye-contact. Holtz's cavalier swagger is gone. Her confidence withdrawn. Her sunlight-bright smile twisted into a grimace that bears her teeth and scrunches her eyes. It's the most vulnerable Erin has ever seen the engineer—in two years she's only witnessed Holtzmann openly cry twice.

"I'm sorry," Holtz babbles, dropping her gaze. Her mind whirls. There was too much to say. "I did this. I made you run. I pushed when I shouldn't have. I _fucked_ _up_. I always fuck something up—"

"Holtz…"

"You were scared, and I tried to help, but then you ran, and we couldn't find you. It was cold and wet, and we couldn't find you. And when we did you were cold and blue and not moving, and I—"

"Holtzmann—"

"You looked like a ragdoll in Patty's arms. I thought we'd gotten there too late. I've never felt someone so cold! You didn't wake up! I thought…I thought you died, and I just…I can't. Not you. I could never—"

" _Jillian!_ "

" _What!?_ " Holtz snaps, breath hitching on a sob. She looks half-mad between the combined wildness of her hair and eyes.

"Breathe, sweetheart. You have to breathe." Drawing on the techniques her childhood therapist taught her to use when fending off a panic attack, Erin leans forward. They were already almost on top of one another in the small bed, but Erin shortens the distance to something warmly intimate by bringing their foreheads together. Taking Holtz's uninjured hand, Erin presses it against her chest. Through the thin fabric of her hospital gown, the engineer's palm and finger pads are like little furnaces.

"Follow me. In," she takes a large breath, forgetting Holtz had fractured ribs which restricted the expansion of her chest, "out. In. Out. Just focus on that. I'm right here. You can see me. You can feel me." The thumb of her opposite hand works in slow circles, tracing Jillian's cheek. "You can hear me, though I hope you can't smell or taste me." The joke falls flat. She brushes past it. " _I'm right here_."

This close, Holtz's breath is warm against Erin's face, tickling her eyelashes. This close, her smell is enveloping, overwhelming, calming. Erin's fingers work on their own accord, following the planes of Holtz's face like a blind man learning brail. She tucks tear-damp locks of hair behind Holtz's ears, opening flushed skin to the cool air of the room. Erin's fingers wander further, threading through tangled locks until they brush the smooth skin along the nape of Holtzmann's neck.

Silence reigns.

After a while, Holtz's breathing steadies. The flush of her face recedes. She visibly relaxes, but a tightness remains to her face that suggests she's wrestling with a heavy kind of discomfort.

Erin bites into her bottom lip. A broken arm and ribs weren't the only thing Holtz walked away from the Whale attack with. A hairline fracture to the pelvis. Lacerations. Internal bruising… _Get a nurse, you idiot! This isn't the time for sentiment and cuddling. Get her help_ , the logical side of her brain shouts.

 _Do that, and you'll lose her. You send her away, you'll further the damage. She needs you, and you need this too_ , another, slightly louder voice interrupts. Stay.

 _'Stay with me'_. Erin still hears the plea even behind the curtain of her closed eyes. She feels her chest tighten. What was she doing? But more importantly, why did it all feel so right?

Slowly, so as not to jostle or startle Holtz, Erin leans back against her thin pillow, taking the younger woman with her. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, she knew if Holtzmann climbed into her bed while she slept and stayed there—injuries and all—Erin wasn't going to be able to talk her back into her own bed. It's a tight fit, but they make it work.

 _What has my life become?_ she asks herself with a wistful internal sigh.

"You ran out of the hospital," Holtz says sometime later, stating it rather than phrasing it as a question. She's curled against Erin again, head resting on her chest, the strain of pain evident in her voice. It takes everything in the brunette not to push the emergency call button. Instead, she employs her fingers in Holtz's hair, combing it out one section at a time. In two years, this was Erin's first glimpse of the true extent of the engineer's hair. It was a marvel.

"I…don't know why I did that," Erin says while she works, thankful Holtz is facing away. Lying was so much easier when not done face-to-face. What she says next is closer to the truth. "I don't remember a lot, and what I do doesn't make any sense. There are these flashes, like someone flipped on a strobe light. But the bursts of imagery all bleed together. I remember this consuming need to run and find a safe place." Which I had all along, she wants to add but refrains, not sure she's ready to broach this topic right now…or ever, to be frankly honest.

"Me, Abby, and Patty looked for you everywhere," Holtz says. "You were missing for four hours."

The mention of her friends gives Erin pause. "Where are they? Abby and Patty, I mean."

"Back at HQ getting some sleep. Doctor's orders. Sleeping in hospital chairs is shit on the back."

Erin blinks, unable to grasp the measure of time. "How long have we been here?"

"A fortnight." Holtzmann feels Erin stiffen, her fingers going still, and can't suppress a pained chuckle. Her ribs were molten agony. She'd never complain out loud, though. "Did you know gullible is written on the ceiling?"

"Haha, very funny," Erin deadpans.

"The nurses moved you in here around five this evening. I say moved like they had a choice. Abby forced them to bring you here from ICU."

This time, Erin's pause is accompanied by her twisting around as much as she could to look at the woman against her chest. She has to strain a bit and feels her leg twinge. "ICU?" she parrots back.

"Intensive Care—"

"I know what it means. Why was I there?"

It's Holtzmann's turn to look surprised. Using her uninjured arm, she shakily repositions herself, back against the bedrail. "You really don't remember, do you?"

"Would I lie about something like that?" Erin almost bites her tongue at the automatic rebuttal—she had already lied once tonight—but maintains a straight face.

"When we found you, you were hypothermic. Also popped the stitches in your leg," Holtz begins mechanically. She can't look directly at Erin while she speaks, directing her gaze at her shoulder. "From what Abby heard from the surgeon who patched you up, you'd lost a lot of blood. The cold helped slow your heart down enough to keep you from bleeding to death, but you wrecked your knee something fierce. Turns out running on a partial dislocation is a bad idea. They had to operate and set it with screws. You're officially a bionic woman, Doctor Gilbert."

Erin stares at her hands, absorbing the news. Decommissioned. The word kept resurfacing. Knee surgery would put her out of physical work for months. Would put the Ghostbusters down to two—Holtzmann would be slower to heal—thinning their ranks and upping the workload.

 _It's what you wanted_ , a slithering voice whispers. _The decision was made for you. Now you can leave like you planned and finally give your friends peace of mind a fuck-up isn't leading them to their deaths._

"Stop it."

The barked reproach snaps Erin's head up. Seldom were the moments the engineer became serious, but when she did the whole world stopped under the power for Jillian Holtzmann's glare.

"W-what—"

"I see your wheels turning." Holtz taps the side of her head for emphasis, face grim. "We've been like family for two years, Erin. I know all the nasty things you're saying to yourself."

Erin feels her cheeks ignite in a brilliant flush. Sometimes she hated how astute the engineer was at mapping her moods and idiosyncrasies. It was unnerving, like having her skin peeled back and her soul bared.

"Why…" Erin trails off, scrambling to steer their conversation into safer waters. "Why did Abby want me moved back in here?"

Holtz shrugs slightly. "I was half asleep when they brought you back in, but I overheard Abby getting pretty heated with an overhead. Said something about needing to keep family together."

It was as much a half-truth as Erin's claim of amnesia. Holtzmann fully overhead the heated conversation, every detail filed away in the puzzle box of her mind. Abby had been furious to discover Erin woke out of anesthesia while she and Patty searched for her new room. She wanted Erin moved back into Holtzmann's room, "Because this family is inseparable, and I will not take no for an answer. You wheel her back in here, or I'll drag the bed down two flights of stairs on my own!"

"Honey, they have an elevator," Patty tried to provide helpfully, watching the sputtering doctor with thinly veiled pity. When angry, Abby was a force of nature. God help the person, place, or thing that got in her way.

"She said that?" Erin ventures with a thin smile, sparing a glance at her bed companion.

"Wouldn't you?" The brunette nods without hesitation. "Then yah have yah answer," Holtz smiles, propping her head on her raised hand. She was doing a marvelous job pretending her body wasn't in agony. Judging by the concerned crinkle of Erin's brow, she shouldn't try as hard. "So now do me a favor, little tit-for-tat, and answer my question. Why are you picking yourself apart again?"

Just like that, the mood turns somber.

"Isn't it obvious?" Erin sighs after a long stint of silence, staring at the ceiling. Her mind is a machine, categorizing all her failures leading up to this point. "I was reckless and naïve. I pushed for that bust before we were ready. I decided to go into the warehouse. I ran when I should have stayed. I watched you die, and it all happened because of me. Because I thought I was ready to lead the team…and I—I fucked up so spectacularly and—"

"Hey," Holtzmann interjects, grabbing her forearm. "Look at me. Look at me." When Erin relents and turns, her eyes are bright and rimmed in red. "Pulling a page from your book; I'm right here, and I'm okay."

"You're not," Erin counters shakily.

Holtz couldn't exactly argue, but she wasn't going to give Erin ammunition to fire back at her with. "But I'm alive. Because of you and Patty and Abby."

"I'm the one that—"

"The cult would have summoned the Whale with or without us there," she speaks over her. "At least we were able to stop it from getting further into the city. We saved the day, again, like the superheroes we all know we are, minus the capes."

"But at the expense of you," Erin hiccups.

"And I almost lost you because of my fuck-up, so I guess we're both two little grim peas in a pod," Holtz bites out, bitterness and regret turning her voice brittle. She scrubs at her eyes with the heel of her uninjured palm. "You didn't know all the variables going into the bust. I knew exactly what I was saying, and I scared you. I scared you so bad you ran and blacked out for four hours, in New York, at night, while it was raining and freezing. What the hell kind of friend am I to do that to someone I—"

There were points in time when logic and sensibility either threw themselves screaming off a cliff or ran in the opposite direction. Erin found herself at one of those crossroads. Her mind screamed one thing. Her instincts another. But remarkably, her heart wins out.

Erin fought with herself for almost two years, waging a silent war in the battlegrounds of her mind. She told herself she didn't know what she wanted. She told herself being indecisive would just lead to heartbreak. She told herself a lot of pretty lies that found themselves blown away by the nuclear explosion of her lips against Holtzmann's.

The blonde stiffens in stunned surprise, sentence cut short. Was this really happening? Fuck, she couldn't bring herself to care. Holtz melts into Erin before she can form a response—two puzzle pieces finally clicking into place—returning the kiss with slow elasticity, senses on overload. She catches a moan in the back of her throat when the brunette pushes her back and slips her tongue past her teeth, fingers tangling in her unkempt hair.

Erin tastes nothing like Holtz imagined. She tastes like tea and peppermint liberally spiced with personal flavor and a little bit of stale morning breath. It's wonderful, if she's being honest. More times than she was willing to admit, Holtz dreamed about this moment. It hadn't exactly turned out as planned—in her mind, the first kiss was initiated by her—but this turn of events is no less powerful.

Fire and ice. Hot and cold. Give and take. Erin experiences it all in the space between heartbeats. Her body is a livewire. Smell, taste, and touch, until this moment, seemed almost muted. Insubstantial. She's alive for the first time in her life and falls into the uncharted waters. Molten heat pools between her legs. Cold static crackles along her fingertips as they wind into Jillian's hair.

The engineer breaks away first. Her body was on fire. Her gaze is an intense blue, the half-moon of her irises peeking out from under heavy lids. "Erin…" she husks, sucking in air like a resurfacing diver.

Erin mirrors her, panting slightly. "Holtz?"

"I love you. I have for a long time." The admission is like TNT in Erin's brain. The explosion sucked the air out of the room. For the first time, the brunette can honestly say she knows what it feels like to see fireworks, but Holtzmann continues in a pinched voice, dampening the moment slightly. "But if you don't call a nurse in the next thirty seconds, I'm either going to puke or pass out. Maybe both. Probably both. Just roll me off the bed if I do. I'll be fine."

Erin blinks—slow to comprehend—until understanding dawns. In a spectacular scramble that almost launches her off the opposite side of her bed, the physicist dives for the emergency call button dangling beside her only to find someone else had beaten her to it. Erin yelps in surprise and jerks back, hand flying to her chest.

"Jesus!"

"Took you long enough," Abby chides lightly, a sly smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

Oh, Erin knew she was going to get an ear-full later judging by the mischief sparkling in the shorter woman's eyes. Her cheeks flare. She does a marvelous impression of a fish out of water. "How…how long have you—"

"Long enough, baby," Patty chuckles, shaking her head. "Though not as long as the two of you, but look at that! Finally breaking ground. Would bring a tear to my eye if you weren't nearly two years overdue." The taller woman doesn't wait for a nurse to show and scoops Holtz up, tenderly carrying her back to her bed beyond the drawn curtain.

The engineer gives her a sheepish smile before her face twists and she loses most of her color. "Bucket…bucket please!"

Abby shoves a sick-bag into Holtz's hands in the nick of time. Erin winces at the sound of retching, feeling her gorge rise. A small part of herself thanks her lucky stars Holtz broke away when she did, or their first encounter could have ended catastrophically.

"Ah, Doctor Holtzmann," a tired sigh comes from the doorway, announcing the arrival of a very exasperated-looking nurse. "Finally back in your bed, I see. Wonder of wonders. My stress level has just dropped ten degrees."

"Always happy to oblige," Holtz croaks, attempting a smile that looks more like a grimace.

"At least you kept your IV in."

"Couldn't take away all your fun."

Erin looks to Patty and Abby for understanding, nervously tucking stray strands of hair behind her ears. She felt like a high schooler caught by her parents. Mortification didn't even begin to cover it. The two women move to her bedside, studiously ignoring her flush, while the nurse situated Holtzmann and administers a hefty dose of painkillers.

"Glad to see you back among the land of the living, Ghost Girl," Abby smiles, sitting on the edge of her best friend's bed. She bumps Erin's shoulder with her own, their fingers intertwining. The brunette feels her chest warm, a smile curling her lips, until the knuckles of Abby's fist connect with her upper arm, hard.

Erin yelps and recoils but can't go far. Abby has her firmly by the hand. "Ow! What the hell, Abby?!"

"That's for scaring the shit out of us, you ass!" the shorter woman huffs, settling down but refusing to let go of Erin's hand, preferring to keep it securely placed in her lap.

"Not like I had a conscious choice on the matter!" the physicist grouses sourly, rubbing her shoulder.

"That's debatable but also a topic for later discussion. I'm just glad you're all right."

"That's also debatable," Erin mumbles but can't help her smile. She knows it will take time for the wounds to heal—both outward and inward for all four of them—but something tells her the process won't be grueling. Not when she has so many around her who care enough to stand by through thick and thin.

"I'd hit you too, but I think that might shoot you into next week. So I'll settle on a hug, for now," Patty says, coming around the opposite side of the bed and wrapping her arms around Erin. Her hug is a tight one but no less warm.

"Yes, let's leave the hitting of Erin alone for a while," Erin smiles. Despite Patty's veiled threat, she feels safer than she has in a long time.

"Don't think you've gotten out of a good smack," Patty warns, wagging a finger. "I've got one planned for both you and Holtz. Bat-shit crazy is what you two are, swear to God."

"I think Holtz has one over Erin," Abby supplies, leaning across her friend to catch a glimpse of the blonde who gives her a weak thumbs-up.

"Ain't no one got nothing in me," she mumbles, the painkillers making her sluggish.

"That woman is crazy. You, my dear, are crazy," Patty puffs out her cheeks, watching the nurse putter around Holtzmann one final time, double checking her work. "I know I'm not telling ya'll anything you don't know, but that little string-bean fought the doctors' tooth and nail when they rolled you back in here, Erin."

"Fought…them?" Erin echoes, eyebrows raising into her hairline. She glances at Holtz—trying to and successfully imagining the engineer grappling the hospital staff—but Jillian has her eyes closed, presumably combatting the pain or starting to drift off.

"She hissed at the doctors when they found her in your bed and tried to pull her off," Abby supplies, lowering her voice like the nurse hadn't been present for that little bit of drama. "Hissed at them. Like a damn cat. We had to convince the staff she wasn't crazy or else it was a one-way ticket to the psych ward."

Erin rubs her forehead. Why did she find this both endearing and frightening at the same time? Probably because she wouldn't expect anything less from Holtz, which said a lot about the engineer's character.

"Doctor Gilbert," the nurse clears her throat, drawing Erin's attention away from personal thoughts. "Since I'm here and you're awake, I'm going to check your bandages. I also need to know what your level of discomfort is, if any, so that I can prepare painkillers if necessary."

Abby and Patty move to the chairs across the room to give the nurse space to work. Erin is torn between morbid curiosity and a driving urge to look away when her bedcovers are moved aside. She didn't handle blood and guys very well. Slime was one thing. Physical injuries, especially on herself, always turn her stomach.

The nurse is quick about her business. There were three small incisions made in Erin's left knee: one directly on top, one above, and one below. The pain is bearable, which comes as a shock until the nurse informs her she'd been dosed pretty heavily directly out of surgery.

"The painkillers are still in your system, but the pain will get worse over time. Knee surgeries are a painful business, so let me know when you start to feeling any form of discomfort. And please, for the love of God, don't walk around." That last warning was spoken almost as a whine. "You'll need to stay off your leg for at least a few days before discharge."

"We'll keep her on bed detail," Abby adds from her chair. Beside her, Patty points two fingers at her eyes and then at Erin, indicating she'd be just as vigilant.

"Because that worked so well for Doctor Holtzmann," the nurse quips.

"Holtz," the blonde slurs. "No doctor. Call me Holtz or Holtzmann or sweet-cheeks. I'll answer to all four."

"And that's my cue to leave. Good afternoon."

"We're going to head down to the cafeteria and grab some chow," Abby announces once the room was occupied by only the Ghostbusters. "Want anything while we're there?"

"No, thank you. I'm fine," Erin replies from her pillow, hands resting across her lap. She almost convinces herself things are back to normal, but a strange kind of reluctant hesitance lingers behind Abby's eyes. Erin already knows even if Abby doesn't or won't admit aloud. She was afraid to leave her best friend alone again—now that she was conscious—fearing Erin would run.

Shame burns in Erin's cheeks. Her smile is more forced than reassuring. "I'm fine, Abby. But if you could find me a paper to read, that would be great."

"I think we can manage that," Patty nods. "TV remote's beside you. Don't get too wild now that mom and mom are out of the room."

"No…wait," Holtz calls, extending the vowel sound before the two women leave, stalling them at the door.

"Holtz, you can't eat anything right now," the taller woman chides. "And I'm not feeding you applesauce again."

"Don't wanna…" The blonde's eyes are heavy, unfocused. "Don't wanna be so far away." She swipes at the air between her and Erin's bed. The only thing separating the two was a curtain and empty tiles, but it might as well have been miles.

Abby snorts and is about to argue when Patty talks past and takes hold of Holtz's bed. Being on wheels, she easily slides it closer until both women could potentially reach out and touch the other with room the spare.

"Ain't no rules again moving beds," the historian says when she catch's Abby's look.

"Pretty sure there is."

"It's either that or she crawls out of bed again. You choose."

There was no choosing, so Abby relents with a sigh and turns to leave, unable to completely hide her knowing smile. "Fine. We'll be back in a few. Don't suck face while we're gone. Pretty sure Holtz's can't properly consent to it anyway."

Erin doesn't get a chance to retort. Her two friends quickly scuttle out of the room, leaving her with a doped up Holtz for company. Exhaling tiredly—she was starting to feel the effects of thinning painkillers in her blood—the physicist closes her eyes for a few seconds only to open them again when she feels fingers wind around her hand.

"Right…here."

"I feel you," Erin replies, turning her head and threading her fingers with Holtz's offered hand. "I'm right here, too. I'll stay."

Holtz's grin is lazy but no less warm. "Promise?"

Erin tightens her grip, her eyes never leaving their locked stare at the engineer. "Promise."

Sometime later, Patty and Abby return from their venture with trays of food smuggled out of the cafeteria. Neither are surprised to find both bedridden women happily asleep, hands intertwined between the beds like lifelines tied off with fingers and flesh. Patty snaps a photo—later evidence—while Abby settles down in her chair. She can't help but notice the peace on Erin's face, something she hadn't seen since their move into the firehouse and the start of their combined careers two years prior. There was still a long way to go, wounds to mend, a life to return to, but for now all the peaceful, and that was more than the Ghostbusters could ask for.


End file.
